The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.

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Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Coral reef scientists estimate that mass bleaching has killed 35% of corals on the northern and central Great Barrier Reef. After months of intensive aerial and underwater surveys, researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies have released an initial estimate of the death toll from coral bleaching. The impact, which is still unfolding, changes dramatically from north to south along the 2300km length of the Reef. “We found on average, that 35% of the corals are now dead or dying on 84 reefs that we surveyed along the northern and central sections of the Great Barrier Reef, between Townsville and Papua New Guinea,” says Professor Terry Hughes, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (JCU). “Some reefs are in much better shape, especially from Cairns southwards, where the average mortality is estimated at only 5%. —ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, May 30, 2016

A child, I dreamed of a metropolis of no kind I knew.
I can figure it out later, I said. Then came the boutique shoes.
What did I understand about those except to say no?
Over the tulle, I turned up my nose.

I spoke from the temple of childhood, from the fever-dream of growing up,
predicted no water to drink, more lost land, moaned, it will all
be gone soon—Saks Fifth, the city pool, the Port O’ Call, ousted
like Clyde Beatty's circus and its lions--to make room for other recreations.

In my first home, they taught fashion which is disguised prejudice
and manners which are mostly separation and meanness.
But what is my recollection? I was all mouth and adolescence.
I had yet to learn only compassion with gravy on its chin will sustain us.

And could I have dreamed an ocean stilled by its freight of CO2,
its islands of plastic? No. I could never imagine saltwater
stretched over uncountable suffocated lives could not
foretell the piled and boundless bones of coral ravaged by a yacht.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and write in the Ozarks. She is the author of two books and three chapbooks, most recently Persephone on the Metro. See her work in Concis, Rat’s Ass Review, Mom Egg Review and upcoming in the Kentucky Review.

Monday, May 30, 2016

Relative places flowers at one of the tombstones in the Los Angeles National Cemetery (then the Sawtelle Veterans Cemetery), where flags were posted for Memorial Day, 1940. This photo was published in the May 30, 1977 Los Angeles Times.

We walk down the rows
in a Civil War cemetery
like we were inspecting the troops
looking for one particularly
outstanding soldier
to pin a medal onto
instead of laying down flowers
in the pouring rain
on a great-great uncle whose name
escapes both us and his headstone.

William Cullen Jr. is a veteran and works at a social services non-profit in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry has appeared in *82Review, Canary, Gulf Stream, Right Hand Pointing, Spillway and Written River: A Journal of Eco-Poetics.

Which of these boys
in the back rows shucked
his suit for another uniform, packed
a Remington revolver 1858,
a Colt 1860,
or a Beaumont-Adams,
aimed a Pattern Enfield 1853 rifled musket,
a Springfield 1861,
or an M1841 Mississippi Rifle,
held high a Model 1832 foot Artillery Sword,
a Cutlass, or a Bowie knife,
before he was cranked
and grounded by a Gatling
or by J.D. Mill’s Coffee Mill Gun?

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Mayor-weighing in High Wycombe, England on May 21, 2016. The custom is thought to go back to medieval times and be unique to High Wycombe. The mayor is weighed in at the start of their year in office and then again at the end to make sure the mayor is not getting fat on the back of the town. Photo by Andrew Colley, Bucks Free Press.

Hey all, Hey! In High Wycombe, it’s weighing day.
Come, big-bellied bureaucrats, step your girth on the scale.
Let the sigh or the groan of the gears tell the tale,
show you abstemious or making loose with our pay.

Hey all, Hey! In High Wycombe, it’s weighing day.
Time to see what the work of our civil servants has been:
Slaving hard for our good or steeping in sin,
Swilling down spirits, cheese and filets.

Hey all, Hey! In High Wycombe it’s weighing day.
Who looks chagrined, buttons straining from stress,
the fine silk of their suits split from duress,
as they step from their town cars, chauffeurs driving away?

Hey all, Hey! In High Wycombe it’s weighing day.
All acts leave a trace, let’s spy out their deeds,
their back-table dealings, the track of their greed,
their cronies and sycophants, let’s make them obey.

Hey all, Hey! In High Wycombe it’s weighing day.
Ready your missiles, your eggs and your offal,
sharpen invective to make them feel awful.
They serve at our pleasure: make them hear what we say.

Devon Balwit is a poet and teacher working in Portland, Oregon. She has poems upcoming in The Fog Machine, The Cape Rock, The Fem, and Of(f) Course. This election distresses her.

Friday, May 27, 2016

A boy looks at a huge photograph showing Hiroshima city after the 1945 atomic bombing. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Japan August 6, 2007. Reuters/Toru Hanai via International Business Times.

Oh children of Japan,

the dot that inflated
to the size of a neutron star.
Oh children of Japan,

you watched your own feet
evaporate.

Oh children of Japan,

you clung to a rope
thick as an Egyptian obelisk.

Oh children of Japan,

an apology flying like
a bomber evading a blast.

Oh children of Japan,

your bodies, a pile
of blackened marbles.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Forgiveness,
an evolution
Apology
is
revolution
Acknowledgment
does not redeem
but embodies
growth maturity understanding
re cog nition
known
see again
grant permission
now better now now now
the denied
arrival
has landed
disembark

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, and metal, to create poems, patterns, stories, music, ornaments, wearables, jewelry, adornments and peace whenever possible. A third generation Caribbean American, New Yorker and firstborn, she has won fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Ragdale, Hurston Wright writers, and the National Endowment for The Arts. She is a Cave Canem fellow. Her manuscript, Them Gone, won Red Paint Hill Publishing’s Editor’s Prize and will be published in 2016.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

“On Monday, May 9, 2016, President Obama signed into law the National Bison Legacy Act, which designates the bison as the official mammal of the United States. . . . Lobbying for the official mammal designation was a coalition of conservationists; ranchers, for whom bison are business; and tribal groups, such as the InterTribal Buffalo Council, which wants to ‘restore bison to Indian nations in a manner that is compatible with their spiritual and cultural beliefs and practices.’ . . . Before the mid-1800s, bison (also called buffalo) lived mostly in the Great Plains, but were also found throughout the continent. . . . The U.S. Army led a campaign to wipe out bison as a way to control [native] tribes. . . . Columbus Delano, secretary of the interior, wrote in 1873: ‘I would not seriously regret the total disappearance of the buffalo from our western plains, in its effect upon the Indians.’ —Elahe Izadi, The Washington Post, May 9, 2016. Image: A colored-pencil drawing by Peg Quinn of a bison’s head.

A bison's bladder holds seven pounds,
about one gallon, enough
for indigenous people to use
for storing water, clothing,
or food when hunting

Horns sufficed as drinking cups,
or carrying hot ash from one fire
to start the next

Fur became blankets,
papoose and moccasin lining

Skin became saddles, or, when
stretched over low lying branches,
sewn to form teepees, clothing,
quivers, drum heads and ‘canvas’
for recording the year in pictures - their
‘winter count’ during freezing blizzards

String was pulled from sinew
then threaded into carved bone needles

This is no metaphor:
drumming sticks were made
by dropping a round rock into
a testicle then wrapping with tendons
to the end of a stick

Sinew binding teeth and hooves
made door rattles outside the teepee
for announcing a visitor

Bones were carved into knives,
scraping tools, and toys while
tails had second lives swatting flies

Eyes, brains, tongues and organs
were reserved as treats for tribal elders,
meat, berries and fish the daily diet
Snacks were made from intestines
packed with dried herbs and jerky

Though no one knows how they used the nose,
it’s no wonder they were worshipped

Peg Quinn grew up in a rural area outside Lincoln, Nebraska. As a child, she once got her head stuck between the tail and rear-end of a life-size buffalo statue in a public park. Today, she teaches art and paints theatrical sets in southern California, always wearing a bison ring made from an Indian head nickel and morns how they were slaughtered as a means of controlling indigenous people. Her Great-Grandmother was Sioux.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

When George Zimmerman advertised
an auction for “a piece of American history,”
the gun he murdered Trayvon Martin with,
it didn’t take long for the bidding to soar
to 65 million dollars, since withdrawn.

The money, George said, would go to two
worthy causes: protecting peace officers
from the violence of Black Lives Matter
protestors and fighting Hillary Clinton’s
“anti-gun rhetoric.”

Like a magician’s wand, this gun will
“Open presto” not just the wallets
of fatuous rich collectors but also
the deep Pandora’s box of bigotry
and racial discrimination.

Poets have no tropes for dopes who
uphold the Second Amendment in order
to justify the right to shoot to kill
any “other” in a hoodie on a dark
Florida night

And they have no tropes for hope that when
President Obama flies the White House
coop he’ll leave the legacy of a post-racial
society, for America is more racialist
than ever.

It turns out that George Zimmerman,
who’s been unemployable since his
acquittal, has accepted a bid of $138,000
for his piece, enough to keep him in beer
and skittles for a few years.

Monday, May 23, 2016

Alejandro Nieto was killed by police in the neighbourhood where he spent his whole life. Did he die because a few white newcomers saw him as a menacing outsider? —The Guardian, March 21, 2016. Image source: Justice for Alex Nieto.

the dog runs on
and my daughter’s friend
is gone

Alex carries a burrito
up Bernal Hill
a neighborhood jewel
his lifelong home

Alex leaps onto a park bench
the dog lunges, yips, growls
Alex stands, fends off the fangs
the dog’s owner doesn’t notice, doesn’t care
he’s looking at a young jogger’s ass
the dog lunges, yips, growls
Alex pulls out a taser, points it at the beast
the owner notices, reins in his dog,
sees he’s facing a taser, not a gun

he trots off with his dog, calls a friend
says he wishes California were like Florida
he could stand his ground against
a brown-skinned, no good gangbanger
who dares to threaten his lovely dog
he could stand his ground against
a Latino dressed in red 49ers jacket
black 49ers cap, black pants, sunglasses
he could dispense with Alex
who is unnerved by a dog lunging
for a burrito on Bernal Hill
a neighborhood jewel
Alex’s lifelong home

Alex sits down, bites into his burrito
some passersby see a normal guy, a familiar face
others see a menace with gun tucked at his waist
one calls 911, police drive up the hill
Alex finishes his meal, stands up
a security guard with licensed taser tucked away
Alex, ready for work, ambles a familiar route
police move in
Alex ambles a familiar route, police move in
he does not know his new neighbors
ensconced in remodeled homes
believe he’s a threat, police move in
Alex does not know his neighbors, ensconced
see him as a threat, police move in

What happens next?
officers involved say they told Alex to stop
but he crouched, weapon in hand
they feared for their lives
he crouched, weapon in hand

people who loved Alex say
he would never do that
he was a role model, a youth advocate
a community volunteer
he studied criminal justice
he knew better than most
how to respond to police

an eyewitness says Alex did not
crouch, did not pull out his taser
an eyewitness says Alex did not
pull out his taser, did not crouch
an eyewitness says Alex’s hands
were in his pockets

my daughter says Alex, her friend
from Horace Mann middle school,
was a sweetheart, a peacemaker, always
a connector, a sweetheart always
in all ways

bullets blast and soar
through Alex’s lifetime home
knock the young man down
shatter his jaw and teeth
rip through leg bones
blast and shatter his lifetime
bullets pound the young man
already down without motion
bullets mangle his brain
his blood colors the ground
and the bullets stop at last
his blood pools on the ground

Alex, Buddhist, peace activist,
junior college graduate
aspiring probation officer
Alex, campaign volunteer
community event organizer
Alex deeply loved and loving deeply
breathes his last on Bernal Hill, his home
Alex, a neighborhood jewel
loving deeply and deeply loved
breathes his last on Bernal Hill
and the bullets stop at last

When San Francisco’s finest enter the home
where Alex dreamed the dreams of childhood
where he grew from beloved boy to beloved man
they do not tell his parents their son is dead
they interrogate, look for gang affiliations
they do not tell his parents their son is dead
they interrogate, look for drug connections
proof that Alex was unstable, unreliable, violent
San Francisco’s finest fail to mention that Alex is dead
until his parents demand answers
with no warrant, San Francisco’s finest steal Alex’s car
they find no drug connections, no gang affiliations
they smear Alex’s memory, look for drug connections
gang affiliations, look for dirt and find none

police brass, city brass exonerate the officers
the grieving parents seek justice, restitution in a civil trial
the dog’s owner testifies, jokes about the jogger’s ass
Alex’s grieving parents look on
the officers laugh in the hallway
the grieving parents look on
a jury clears the laughing officers
the grieving parents look on
the dog’s owner doesn’t notice, doesn’t care

Mara Adamitz Scrupe has created significant bodies of work in poetry, book arts, installation, and social practice. Her fellowships include NEA/CEC ArtsLink, D.C. Commission on the Arts, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. She has authored two poetry collections Sky Pilot published by Finishing Line Press, and BEAST, winner of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies' Stevens Manuscript Award. Scrupe’s poems have been widely published nationally and internationally in literary journals and anthologies and she has won numerous prizes and awards for her work.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

You must remember this
As our government bestows a kiss.
It's still the same old story
For a warmonger seeking glory.
We forget the sins of the past:
Russian Jews? Let 'em be gassed.
Cambodian women and children?
Bomb 'em by the million.
The democratic government of Chile?
We'll overthrow 'em in a jiffy.
Henry faithfully served Richard Nixon,
To whom he felt intellectually superior,
But owes his career to being up Tricky's posterior.

George Salamon has followed the exploits of Kissinger since the days both spent time in Cambridge, MA.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Duress held captive by her will,
she held him thrashing in a boat
then waded through the waves and chill
that kept his hardened heart afloat.
She then assayed the Rio Grande,
less émigré in sore distress
than athlete in a marathon.
Her mettle hammered out US
of A above the custom house
across the line from Mexico.
Nor would the trials still pending douse
the girl’s triumphant afterglow
at having weathered storm and stress.
A tough as leather pioneer,
she trumpeted resourcefulness
to claim her valor’s broad frontier.

Born & bred in New Jersey, Frank De Canio works in New York. Shakespeare is his consolation, writing his hobby.

Afzal Moolla was born in Delhi, India while his parents were in exile, working as political exiles against Apartheid in South Africa. He then traveled wherever his parent’s work took them, spending time in Egypt, Finland, and Iran. Afzal works and lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Monday, May 16, 2016

Cheered by a racist, misogynist rabble,
Trumpty Dumpty struts and he babbles—
“It’s gonna be HUGE, cause everyone loves me.
I own the party; there’s no one above me.”

In the hallways of power, the leaders are shocked—
this kind of revolt should be easily blocked,
and yet Trump has smashed the establishment boys;
he can stoop even lower than the worst red state ploys.

And smug pundits claiming, “It could not happen here”
choke on their words and cry in their beers,
“It’s the death of conservatism! Horror of horrors!
If Trump becomes president, there’ll be no tomorrow!”

So now Trumpty Dumpty wants to be crowned;
wants the Bushes to grovel, Paul Ryan to bow down.
Though he thinks he has won this political bet,
Trumpty Dumpty may find elephants never forget.

And Trumpty Dumpty will find in the race,
most voters require at least some social grace.
Small-hand obsessions and childish tweets
show the orangest candidate can’t take the heat.

While the world looks in horror, while the world holds its breath,
the voters will choose if we pull back from the death
of what makes America historically best—
patience and kindness, tolerance, respect.

But that’s not up to Trumpty; that job’s up to us!
Enough with the rhetoric—it’s time to discuss
where we’re going with neighbors, we can and we will
back away from the hatred and turn down the shrill.

Find your opposite number, have a coffee or beer—
chat for an hour, unlearn your fear.
We live here together, and together must work
to uncover and vanquish the hatred that lurks

where people feeling unheard and under attack
blame their lost future on the Latin, the Black—
don’t put your trust in a strange orange man;
let’s bring our country together again.

Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep concern for ecology and our planet's future. Her first full length poetry book, Elegy for the 21st Century, will be published in October 2016 by FutureCycle Press.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Barbara A Taylor’s free verse poems, renku, haiga, haibun, haiku, tanka, and other Japanese short form poetry appear in many international journals and anthologies on line and in print. She lives in the Rainbow Region, Northern NSW, Australia.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Ms. Carly Fiorina once ran Hewlett-Packard,
Reaping pay package privileges stock-option lacquered.
Critics say she ran HP straight down to the bottom,
And the Board sent her packing four months after autumn.

With executive branch as next target for Carly,
Sure, she lost the primary, but proved herself snarly.
So Cruz tabbed her for VP and heaped her with praise,
And at that announcement she fell off the stage.

After Carly’s VP gig in utero aborted,
A new world record for her was reported:
She had set a new standard of debacle perfection
By losing two times in the selfsame election.

Richard Hacken, an ultraviolet Soul politically trapped in an infrared State, has never been in Hackensack. A librarian and poet, he has translated the poetry of Galsan Tschinag, a Mongolian poet who writes in German.

Friday, May 13, 2016

A Donald Trump mural painted by street artist Hanksy on Orchard St. between Canal and Division Sts. on the Lower East Side. —NY Daily News Photo by SHAWN INGLIMA

In the blonde hair-skunk, in the barbershop of the mind
where the scissors raise hairs and pat them down
to demand what one wants not needs, the patience of a lion,
ingenuity of a roach, America with a Trump at its head,
the roach motel of the world, on his knees, a nice picture…
what he said to the young woman on t.v.,
a working class woman, it’s a nice picture, you
on your knees. Walled off in the mind, the soul
a mountain range of rage and nowhere to go but
to the streets where a young man bears the likeness
of North America on his bloodied face.
Do we recall the ISIS terrorist in his jeep
happy to drag five corpses? Five corpses
hanging from the moon, five corpses loaded like bullets
into the chamber of a gun, you fire-walker, you brandist,
you woman-basher, you human torture chamber,
you radioactive toad, you lacquered manipulator,
you burnt toast anachronism, you oversexed missile,
you Roman fop, you Towers burning, one man leaps
from a window of the World Trade, martyr man,
L-man, J-woman, moon feces in the shape of Trump,
in the shape of Mar-a-Lago, in the shape of Chris Christie,
piles in the cemetery where Lorca’s body lies forever
falling, never forgetting the artists’ Golgotha
in the rainstorm of human history where Trump’s foot soldiers
come to take Federico away at dawn as the rooster crows
as the apostle drowns his only son as George Washington
steps on the muddy bank as Hamilton takes aim at Burr
as Burr is borne again as the harrowing present grows wings
as the Star-Spangled Banner itself sings as the baseball field
turns to boner flowers or red licorice for wealthy trophy wives
as the hives of the rich enlarge as the states pronounce
themselves more significant than the next. Who comes
in the name of business rats? Who’s driven in Picasso
limousines? Who comes in chariots of designer
water bottles? Who comes in light-clouds Wall Street?
Who comes wagging an Arizona finger? Who comes
riding a marble horse? To eat and leave the night
an empty plate for children to weep, for the landlord
to tie our wrists down in the apex of our city streets
where the thief is arrested, shouting in stressed vowels,
as the helicopter shakes our house out of its safe slumber
and into another broken eight years of politicos and bankers,
eight years of sourceless regrets, eight years of teachers
blamed like communists, eight years of flogging
middlemen, eight years of clown-hog campaigns,
eight years of pornographic magazine covers, eight years
of cigars and neon caviar, eight years of swimming in pools
full of sheep semen. We, it began, we, it finishes, we.

Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

If your beliefs include marginalizing other people
because of their skin color, their religious faith, their gender,
their sexual orientation, their origin, their age;
If your beliefs allow justification for depriving
other people of their civil rights to life, liberty, and
happiness pursuits declared in seventeen seventy-six;
If your beliefs condone slaughter, rape, assault, subjugation,
imprisonment, execution of those you see as "others";
If your beliefs create stigmas to prevent those who appear,
think, love, or speak differently than you from making a living,
feeding their families, buying a home, earning retirement;
If your beliefs allow children to go to bed hungry, the
sick to go bankrupt, the disabled to struggle to survive,
the mentally ill to wander homeless, the store clerks to need
welfare benefits, the elderly to freeze through the winter;
If your beliefs prevent access to reproductive health care
while keeping young people ignorant about the facts of life
and the realities of sexual health, choices, and pleasure;
Then I'm under no obligation to respect your beliefs.
Keep your hate to yourself. Keep it out of our country, state, and
city laws, our schools, parks, stores workplaces, and public restrooms.

As a reporter, editor, business writer, and marketing communications consultant, F.I. Goldhaber produced news stories, feature articles, essays, editorial columns, and reviews for newspapers, corporations, governments, and non-profits in five states. Now, her poems, short stories, novelettes, essays, and reviews appear in paper, electronic, and audio magazines, ezines, newspapers, calendars, and anthologies.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

A hero in his small town
as is often the case where
there is a wish for local heroes
and some must be found
to satisfy the need to brag
therefore he and his students
fulfilled the boosters need
for his young disciples won
their matches in the
wresting ring to the glory
of the school and these
adolescent athletes who
spread the fame of their
coach who seemed to love
his young charges learning
the holds and the tricks
of the wresting trade
and much more hidden
from public and pubic
view concealed outside
the showers or the gym.
Taking his deceitfulness
to the shadiness of politics
he smiled as he corrupted
the democratic process
of government while reaping
the financial benefits of that guile
to fatten banks accounts
both his own and that of
certain colleagues who
shared his lack of ethics
until caught manipulating
bank accounts with an
illegal wrestling of his
fortune to silence a now
grown lover boy who
demanded hulking payment
for his silence so caught
and sentenced as ironic
reward to the prison he
bought with his conduct.

Howard Winn's work has been published in Dalhousie Review, The Long Story, Galway Review, Descant. Antigonish Review, Southern Humanities Review, Chaffin Review, Main Street Rag, Evansville Review, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, 3288 Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, and Blueline. He has a novel coming out soon from Propertius Press. His B.A. is from Vassar College. his M.A. from the Stanford University Creative Writing Program. His doctoral work was done at NYU. He is Professor of English at SUNY-Duchess.

himself. Zinging demeaning
soliloquies. No boy David slinging stones. Just
himself. “Mini-Me staggers me!” “Holy hyperbole! I think he shot
himself in the foot in his mouth.”

Ouch.

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Her poems have appeared in *82 Review and Five Magazine and in an anthology by Wicwas Press. She is also the author of a number of books on worship and theology.

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